Issue Topic: Technology and a Thinking Reed

As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

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I agree with the statement that the more dependent people become on technology, the ability to think will deteriorate. That is already ongoing and affecting people's basic skills in life.

The biggest contributor is the development of the Internet. It has changed the way we search for information and think about a certain topic. Before the age of the Internet, people had to look for information from limited source available to them, and form a hypothesis on their own. For example, you read a news article saying that the suicide rate is steadily decreasing for the past several years. If you wonder why, you need to go to the library for very technical books and think about several possible reasons for yourself. There was no other way unless you have an acquaintance who is an expert in that area. On the other hand, it is most likely that people rush to the Internet and find the reason for the decline. They would think for zero moment because it is simply a waste of time if they could find a likely "answer" on the Internet instantly. The process of thinking is taken very lightly with the technology.

Another example is automation. In factories or office, a lot of procedures are automatically performed by computers or robots. As a result, workers tend to forget how the individual steps in the system works, or even, what the whole automated system is for. The technology may have brought apparent convenience and efficiency, but the workers' decline in active thinking is its serious side effect. Even with the latest technology of automation, problems and errors still occur, and it is human workers who have to deal with it. Lacking regular habit of thinking for themselves, troubleshoot might be a difficult task for them because the machines and computers they usually rely on are all out of order.

The points mentioned above are widely seen in any industry or household. It is ironically showing that the complicated technology is making humans less intelligent. We are obliged to realise the consequences of the technology, and not let ourselves give away the task of thinking - the most important activity of human beings - to technologies. Or they may take control of us.